What do we know about the human heart under the icon of the Royal martyrs

A huge procession on hanino the Pit and people passing under the icon of the Royal martyrs – “paganism”, a custom or just a game that person needs – says the priest Sergei Kruglov.

Photo: Alexander Natruskin/Reuters/Pixstream

July 1918 – as king mourned

For members of the Royal martyrs, in the first place, the example of a family

“A lot of them are poor, have undergone suffering”

“We passed this way together with the Royal passion-bearers”

With a crown on his head, but more often without it – the icon of the Royal martyrs

“But is it Christianity?”

Priest Sergei Kruglov

Photos taken by pilgrims during the Royal days in Yekaterinburg, bypass social networks, seen them impresses the imagination of both believers and those who are far from the Church, and thousands of people, adults and children, night Liturgy in the Church on the spilled Blood, a huge procession on Ganina Hole…

In one of the photos depicted people passing, crossed himself and bent low, under a huge icon of the Royal martyrs. Needless to say that I was surprised to read on Facebook under this photo comment of this kind: “but is it Christianity, EW, that’s paganism!”, and then comments to those comments where the skeptics-critics rush to give examples of other “paganism”, common in the Orthodox Church, from the customs to install in the temples of Christmas trees, the birches on the Trinity and wait for the Holy fire on Holy Saturday before the blessing of water, veneration of relics and icons, and so on.

About the different kinds of customs, obychayah and small obuchalkah, which, indeed, in Orthodox parlance innumerable repeatedly been speak-spoke, and as applied to him revealing the word “paganism” sounds very often. And here I come to mind another word – “game”.

Hear the cry: “Well, of course, the children play, they learn about the world and learn to live in it and then adults. They do not read the gospel, Christ cannot remember, and in looking for some magic!” Sorry, I do not agree. How do you know that these people do not read the gospel and don’t remember about Christ? How do you know the heart of EVERY person standing in a long queue to the relics, or held under the icon near the Temple-on-Blood?

I don’t know, climbed I would be under that icon. I’m not a fan of such actions. But write something that I am now speculative, the abstract – because I was not there and admit that if it was, the Lord could touch me as something special.

Photo: vk.com/nsad_ru

Looking from the outside, especially on a photo do not understand. On the contrary, as we (referring to himself and other priests and parishioners) know of evidence that anything at all is not a believer was at the Shrine, was somehow involved in that “custom” – and first met Christ it was there…

I do not agree with the fact that they play only children. No, play and adults. Game in the nature and animal, and man. And it has not only a utilitarian sense – to know the environment and learn to cope with it.

Just play something and not utilitarian, and in this sense it has much in common with myth, and with the ability to dream, and with creativity, and with a religious rite, with all that indicates man’s attempt to break up beyond the “purely human”.

Would you all play and it is the thing to do

Review of the game phenomenon has dedicated his book “Homo ludens” written in 1938, Dutch historian, philosopher, culturologist Johan Huizinga, all whose works are permeated by the quest of truth and an ethical imperative and stems from the Christian system of values. Here is what he wrote:

“The game, whatever its nature, is not something material. Already in the animal world, it breaks beyond the boundaries of physical existence. From the point of view of the world as conceivable deterministic, that is, as a purely strong interaction, the game is in the full sense of the word “superabundans,” something redundant. Only after the invasion of the spirit that negates this absolute determinism, the existence of the game is possible, conceivable, comprehensible. The existence of the game continuously says, and it is in the highest sense, verhovetskiy the nature of our position in space. Pets can play, therefore they are already more than mechanisms.

We know that we play, therefore we are more than only rational beings, for play is unreasonable”.

The game often counter – seriousness: would you all play and it is to do business, to live in the real world!.. Of course, to confuse a game and real life is impossible, but sometimes holding between them “clear boundaries” is cutting someone who’s alive.

In the end, Christ was crucified not dreamers and lovers of games, and very serious people, show them the beauty of the lilies of the field and the birds of the sky carelessness, seriously would have blamed God Himself for what He engaged in such nonsense, but about feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, the extermination of the infidels, the credibility of svjascennaja and the power of the state neradit.

The game – something that is given selflessly, that is, willingly, without any external coercion and from the inside out. Perhaps we adults can compare this selflessness, the selflessness with which you made love or creativity. The game is impossible without special rules, which define the boundaries of the game, and then we come to the concept of culture is impossible without establishing and understanding boundaries.

But we all have one and the same Christ

Culture – as a greenhouse with a special system of supports and garters, with complex rules of watering and feeding plants, it does not replace the man of higher meaning, but helps you to attain it. Culture is the intermediary person to the Sky, and, speaking of the dislike of the world, Christ was not talking about her, but about the passions which are able to corrode it, to obscure the person remembering about God and about the meaning of life, to direct man from God, in ruinous direction. It is in this sense that Christ rebelled against the intrinsic value of the ritual and “tradition of men”, but, moreover, showed that he came not to abolish the law but to fulfill, revealing his true life-giving essence.

Culture is something that was born, raised and lives, not abstract, but the concrete and unique, I, you, he. Speaking of subcultures within the Church, we mean that some people live the pilgrimages to shrines, love of the parish folk customs and stories of the elders and collect lists from a variety of icons, other scientists read theological papers and go to seminars, and others – do not read anything except the gospel, and more engaged in what we call the dry words “social service”, and there’s a fourth, who like to hold festivals and rock concerts and messing around with children or youth, there is a fifth, and one hundred and twentieth, and all these people are different and live differently, but they are one and the same Christ, and in Christ they are together.

Photo: patriarchia.ru

Another thing, when Christ is not present when It is not in the center of it all, and the gospel is a person – different meanings and different goals. Then, of course, war. The war between white and red, monarchists and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, between Palamas and Lossky readers and readers of “the Golden legend”, between those who are in a hurry a thousand miles to pass under the icon of the Saint, and those who contemptuously put it a label of “paganism”…

Game, severity, and mercy – are necessary for humans. But take away charity, and all is meaningless: the game will turn into a merrymaking, filled with mortal desires, seriousness – in the Orwellian dystopia, both in hell, where all the torturing everyone.

It’s like the Apostle Paul: faith, hope, love, but the love of them above, and without it everything is meaningless, everything is God’s…

Where love is there and genuine joy. And not to say about the game, of love and joy better than the aforementioned us Huizinga:

“When human thought permeates all the treasures of the spirit and experiencing all the splendor of his power, at the bottom of every serious judgement every time she discovers some remains problematic. Any statement critical judgment recognizes his own mind as not quite final. At that point, where the judgment hesitates, disappears consciousness of complete seriousness.

Instead of the old “all is vanity” is put forward, perhaps more positive-sounding “everything is a game”. This seems like a cheap metaphor and the impotence of the spirit. But it is the wisdom that came Plato, calling the man a plaything of the gods. In a wonderful way this idea is returned to in the Book of Proverbs. There is Wisdom, the fountain of justice and the rule says that before the beginning of creation, playing God, was she happy and playing in the earth around Him, had shared the joy with the sons of men”.